March 15, 2011

Madison Mugabes

Senate Majority Scott Fitzgerald has told Senate Republicans that any votes taken by Senate Democrats in standing committee public hearings and executive sessions will not be counted or recorded.

"Please note that all 14 Democrat senators are still in contempt of the Senate," Fitzgerald wrote in an email Monday afternoon that was posted on wispolitics.com "Therefore, when taking roll call votes on amendments and bills during executive sessions, Senate Democrats' votes will not be reflected in the Records of Committee Proceedings or the Senate Journal."

I'm honestly 50-50 at this point on whether or not Walker's going to just try and make the recalls themselves illegal, or if Fitzgerald will simply refuse to seat replacement Democrats.

March 14, 2011

"Journalistic Civility"

Liberals often fail to elaborate when they say that the media is absolutely useless, and this week's comic aims to illustrate it. There's a terrible, lazy belief in the news media that integrity and honestly is defined by not being rude to people who you're reporting on. This is why, to use the biggest example, the nightly news will never actually call any politician a "liar" even when they--let me get the dictionary here--"knowingly convey a false image or impression."

See, here's the small problem, to use the now-cliched Daily Show line: facts quite often have a liberal bias, so when a reporter deigns to tell them, it often means in the eyes of the corporate-backed right that they have broken the "civility" of journalism by not pretending that "nuh-UH!" is a valid right-wing counter-point. Which is why an NPR executive is out of a job for declaring what news outlets should have been doing for, let's say, ever.

A great example that occured as I was inking the strip last night was Ezra Klein's latest post, which while intelligent, informative and above all completely true, also serves as the cover story of the hypothetical periodical No Shit Weekly. Journalistic civilty makes the obvious point--that Republicans oppose health care because Democrats are supporting it--a basic statement. A better way to report this would be to point out that, given that the purpose of the health care bill is to provide more people health care, Republicans are working to ensure that thousands of people die so they can win elections. Ironically, Ezra pointed that out a while back and almost lost his job.